Oldest sundial found?

Wibbs

Link hereNow I know it's the Daily Fail so... Apparently 3000 years old found in Ukraine. I understood there were middle eastern ones before that.

Never mind that, what about the Knowth stone that more than a few people have reckoned is a sundial, significantly older than any other so far found.

It's far more finely carved than this most recent example and at nigh on 4500 years old predates any others.

On that score if it is a sundial, then given it's current upright position it wouldn't be much cop as one which would suggest it's earlier again and later reused as decoration for the Knowth mound. IIRC there are other stones at Knowth that may have calendar type inscriptions. PLus again IIRC there are carved stones in Knowth and Newgrange where the markings are on the inside, invisible once the building was finished, which might again suggest reuse?

Thoughts?

bawn79

Wibbs wrote: »

Link hereNow I know it's the Daily Fail so... Apparently 3000 years old found in Ukraine. I understood there were middle eastern ones before that.

Never mind that, what about the Knowth stone that more than a few people have reckoned is a sundial, significantly older than any other so far found.

It's far more finely carved than this most recent example and at nigh on 4500 years old predates any others.

On that score if it is a sundial, then given it's current upright position it wouldn't be much cop as one which would suggest it's earlier again and later reused as decoration for the Knowth mound. IIRC there are other stones at Knowth that may have calendar type inscriptions. PLus again IIRC there are carved stones in Knowth and Newgrange where the markings are on the inside, invisible once the building was finished, which might again suggest reuse?

Thoughts?

A really great book on the subject is Martin Brennan's http://www.knowth.com/stones_of_time.htm

He made a very good pass at explaining what the various carvings signify etc. He also predicted / observed that the standing stone at the entrance to the west passage of Knowth is a gnomon which casts a shadow on a carved stone at the entrance of Knowth.

http://www.mythicalireland.com/ancientsites/knowth/westshadow.html

slowburner

Pictures of the Ukrainian sundial here.
http://www.livescience.com/40227-bronze-age-sundial-grave.html


Here's Martin Brennan's letter to the Times (1980) concerning the Knowth sundial.

Sir,
In an article on the archaeological excavation at Knowth (September 11th) the identification of one of the stones near the entrance as being sundial was brought into question. If this stone was positively identified as a sundial, it would be the oldest sundial known, pre-dating what are presently regards as the oldest sundials by some 3,400 years. Presently, the oldest known sundials are from Egypt and are dated at 1500 BC.

In order to avoid useless speculation about the stone, an experiment was set up to determine if the stone was in fact utilised as a sundial in its present situation. Before the experiment began, it was already recognised that the stone had all the requirements of a functional sundial, including gnomon position and radial angles marked clearly. A model of the stone was constructed, gnomons positioned and the bearing of the stone was duplicated.

The model stone was observed and data was collected for over one year. The results of the experiment are, of course, repeatable. There can be no reasonable doubt that not only is the stone in question a sundial but it is a highly sophisticated sundial utilising multiple gnomons and functioning every day of the year. Technically, it would be classified as a vertical east-declining dial. Position of the sun at equinox and summer solstice are particularly heavily inscribed. The astronomical data that the sundial is capable of registering far exceeds agricultural requirements and is more in the area of precision timekeeping. Furthermore, the vertical marks that are supposed to mark "tomb" entrances quite clearly mark astronomical alignments. The largest and most obvious vertical mark is on kerbstone 52, Newgrange, marking the position of the rising sun at winter solstice and not marking a "tomb" entrance. At the moment it seems that the only absolutely conclusive evidence we have regarding these mounds is that they are astronomically aligned.

Everything else is pure speculation.

Yours, etc.,

Martin Brennan, 4 Upper Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin 2.

Not everyone agrees with Brennan's interpretation of the symbolism and alignments of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. Brennan left Ireland in the 80s in somewhat negative circumstances.
He was invited to speak at the Boyne Valley Revision Conference in 2012.
George Eogan and he met at the conference - now that's a conversation I'd like to have overheard.

bawn79

slowburner wrote: »

Pictures of the Ukrainian sundial here.
http://www.livescience.com/40227-bronze-age-sundial-grave.html


Here's Martin Brennan's letter to the Times (1980) concerning the Knowth sundial.
Not everyone agrees with Brennan's interpretation of the symbolism and alignments of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. Brennan left Ireland in the 80s in somewhat negative circumstances.
He was invited to speak at the Boyne Valley Revision Conference in 2012.
George Eogan and he met at the conference - now that's a conversation I'd like to have overheard.

I suppose there is no agreed interpretation of the symbolism of the rock art (otherwise we wouldn't be debating what it means here!) but at this stage I think there is agreement on the alignments.

Without turning this into an archaeologist bashing thread most of Brennan's alignments has now been 'rediscovered' by other archaeologists. What I mean is that they tend to not reference his work on them. Again I don't want to bash any particular person about this but can show in a PM if interested.

I heard about the conference alright - I think the meeting went pretty well with them getting on well.

By the way does anyone have a link to the information as to why Martin Brennan left in "negative circumstances"?

For information here is a review of Stones of Time by Claire O'Kelly. I think it shows that there was a lot of bad blood on both "sides" here!

STONE MAD
CLAIRE O'KELLY
The Stars and the stones
Ancient Art and Astronomy in
Ireland. By Martin Brennan. Thames & Hudson £12(UK)

As an archaeologist I find myself at a loss as to how to attempt a review of
this book or to say anything favourable about it beyond the fact that it is
well produced. This, however, is something we have come to expect from the
publishing firm concerned. One usually opens a nice looking book with a
feeling of pleasurable anticipation but the introduction alone (Part 1)
quickly dispels this. It contains errors, misrepresentations, innuendos, and
even sneers at the expense of what the author calls "modern archaeologists"
- of the Irish breed, of course. The latter are sharply differentiated from
the antiquarians of the past. They knew it all, we knew it not. Four legs
good, two legs bad.

Yet this book could not have been put together without the contributions of
these same modern archaeologists, unacknowledged by Brennan except in the
rarest cases and in the vaguest terms. Not even copyrights are respected. It
is standard practice among archaeologists and among those who write with
authority on related subjects, to acknowledge, not only those whose work and
ideas had helped them, but also the sources of their illustration material.
Had Mr. Brennan been of their number, perhaps he too would have followed
this convention.

The dust-jacket blurb tells us that Martin Brennan is an American who
majored in Visual Communication and who, when he came to Ireland (in 1970),
"Spent more than a decade engaged in active research on megalithic art."

I myself have spent more than twice that time in the same pursuit in the
Boyne Valley and though our paths ought to have coincided during some part
of the period of his "active research," I never so much as had a sighting of
him, as the bird watchers say.

One of his principal aims in the introduction seems to be to show up the
pitiful inadequacy of Irish archaeologists. We stood idly by while he
himself and various Jacks and David's and Paula's, as he refers to them,
flew in or blew in, from foreign parts. (He gives their names in full in the
acknowledgements). It was left up to them to "illuminate part of our
prehistoric heritage that has for so long been shrouded in darkness and
mystery."

According to the dust-jacket. What are called "Practical field observations"
began in 1980, two years before the book was written, and the catalogue of
the movements of the Brennan relay-team made me, slow-top archaeologist that
I am, feel quite dizzy. They chuntered between the Boyne Valley, Co. Tyrone,
Tara, West Cork, the Loughcrew hills, and so on presumably bringing home,
not the bacon, but slices of our neglected prehistoric heritage.

Mr. Brennnan's path was not an easy one. He says "he failed to interest
archaeologists in his ideas" (p9). In order to make a study of Knowth he had
to resort to what he calls "painstaking archaeological espionage" which
involved among other things, making "my own observations of the site at a
distance with binoculars." No wonder that "David was amazed that I had
succeeded in documenting most of the art of Knowth in spite of the veil of
secrecy". (p56)

Our stupidity in the matter of the winter solstice at Newgrange is
unforgivable because it appears that from the seventeenth century onwards,
everyone but ourselves know about it. The caretaker, Robert Hickey, whom
Brennan "had the honour of meeting" in 1970, knew about it, but would we
listen to him? A few lines farther on he is referred to as "the embittered
caretaker". In fact, Bob Hickey's information was gleaned from Professor
O'Kelly who first observed the occurrence in 1967 because this was the first
time it could be done accurately, for reasons made clear in various of his
written accounts. Bob Hickey, who was a good friend to us at Newgrange, had
never promulgated the winter solstice theory before this.

The favourite lore going the rounds was that a dark brown stain on one of
the basin stones in the chamber had been caused by blood dripping from the
victims who had been, as it was put, "cremated kneeling" therein. How
thankful we should be that this tradition escaped Mr Brennan's eager ear
because my husband subsequently, had the basin washed in the foolish belief
that the stain was merely the "drop-down" from a crack in the roof just
above.

Brennan labels the failure to investigate the solstice phenomenon until 1969
(sic) as "In many ways one of the greatest blunders of Irish archaeology".
What would have been his reaction had he known of the removal of the
significant stain?

Professor George Eogan at nearby Knowth has not escaped the lash either. It
seems he must have denied access to Brennan and team, quite unreasonably,
because Eogan was engaged only in excavation, not "active research," Eogan
had completely "sealed (the site) off from the enquiring eyes of independent
researchers by a high wire fence topped by barbed wire."

Was one of Eogan's greatest blunders the fact that the fence was not an
electric one, a common enough protection for archaeological sites? It seems
that "Jack and I had always felt that the responsibility for awakening an
entirely new approach to Irish megalithic culture rested firmly on our
shoulders. If we were forced to gain information by scaling over barriers
and obstacles placed in our path by archaeologists, we were bound to do so.
With this thought irmly palnted in my mind, I indicated to David that we
were ready to move in."" Jack was absent, doing the stone circles of west
Cork, apparently. Move in they did, on two occasions, and Paula came along
to help.

As already mentioned, the above refers only to the introduction. Part 11 is
called "Megalithic Observatories" and Part 111 "Megalithic Art". To take the
latter first. All the megalithic art of Ireland, with the exceptions of some
of the Knowth stones, is already in print, published variously by the Royal
Irish Academy, by the Oxford University Press and by Thames & Hudson, and it
took the archaeologists concerned many years to accomplish, no doubt due to
our own limitations. The blurb accompanying this book gives us to understand
that Martin Brennan "In his text and own superb two-colour drawings fully
documents these discoveries".

It seems to me that if his name does not go down in the records of Irish
archaeology, it certainly deserves a place in the Guinness Book.

As representing my own opinion of Part 11, I quote Dr. Douglas Heggie, an
acknowledged authority on megalithic astronomy, whose Megalithic Science was
published in 1981, again by the versatile Thames Hudson, Heggie observes:;
"Many authors have remarked that certain megaliths point in the directions
at which various astronomical phenomena take place The observation that the
astronomical theory fits the facts does not help us to choose between the
possibility that the alignments are coincidental and the possibility that
they are intentional."

"Brennan deserves a place in the Guinness Book of Records" 4/12/83 Inside
Tribune.

Claire O'Kelly is author of "The Illustrated Guide to Newgrange" and of
'Passage Grave Art in the Boyne Valley.'

Wibbs

Well on the other side one could argue especially in the case of the meath site as a whole that Irish Archaeology didn't exactly cover itself in roses either. The Newgrange reconstruction is nothing but a joke. What we see today is built for the tourists and from the imagination of Archaeologists, not even within sniffing distance of the original reality. The great white facade we all know simply wouldn't stand up without the modern concrete and steel frame it's built from. What we see today is Archaeological pebble dash, yet all too often than not it's "officially" defended even today. The reconstruction at Knowth is significantly more scientific and sensitive thank god*

On this Brennan guys theories, they either have legs or they don't. Simple as that. Remove the "how dare he as an amateur" BS and test the theory. Take each theory and show why it's wrong. Come up with better theories. It's called science. Bitching about him, which O'Kelly is doing in that example isn't.

The "sundial" should be a piss easy easy one to test. Take a rubbing from the original, lay it out on a wooden board, transfer markings onto same, stick gnomon in what appear to be gnomon holes, watch the shadows. If they line up the way a sundial would well then you have your answer. Has anyone in the Archaeological community here actually done this and proven it one way or the other? If not then yer mans argument is as valid as anyones.




*though personally I reckon the plaza of stones at the front is more due to erosion processes over time, rather than the original layout. For a start try walking on that lot in thin soled moccasins.

cfuserkildare

Wasn't there a sundial found recently that is on the same scal as Stonehenge?

Dated around 4,000 years old?

Unless I am confusing it with something else.

bogwalrus

cfuserkildare wrote: »

Wasn't there a sundial found recently that is on the same scal as Stonehenge?

Dated around 4,000 years old?

Unless I am confusing it with something else.

I think you mean those "pits" over a large distance that show the phases of the moon. There is a post about them somewhere here.

Cianmcliam

bogwalrus wrote: »

I think you mean those "pits" over a large distance that show the phases of the moon. There is a post about them somewhere here.

Yeah I guess this was the so-called Mesolithic post hole calendar found in Scotland, seemed fairly iffy to me!

There are indeed other examples of the 'sundial' motif found at Newgrange, Knowth and Loughcrew, most are very small and some pretty crude. It would be hard to suggest these were able to be used as a functioning sundial though they may perhaps signify the concept or something entirely unrelated, then scaled up for the Knowth kerbstone.
On the Newgrange reconstruction, I've seen plenty of near vertical walls retaining massive cairns so while it may be correct that such a wall may not be safe in the very long term at a tourist site, that doesn't mean that it would never have stood something like it is now.

Wibbs

Like I say the sundial hypotheses can be tested to a large degree. If the kerbstone design works as a sundial, the well you're a little closer to saying it's possible it's a sundial of some nature. Given the builders at the time could angle an entire mound to a solstice and build an "equinox machine" with an accuracy that still works today(although procession means it doesn't fill the whole chamber as once it did) then a sundial is not too much of a stretch at all.

The Brennan guy claims he has built such a reconstruction and it worked. I'd be more interested in that claim, than the position of O'Kelly who is so irritated with Brennan et al that she even talks about things he might have said as part of what laughingly passes as an argument. Daft. reads more like sour grapes to me. Maybe his books sold more than hers?

Cianmcliam wrote: »

On the Newgrange reconstruction, I've seen plenty of near vertical walls retaining massive cairns so while it may be correct that such a wall may not be safe in the very long term at a tourist site, that doesn't mean that it would never have stood something like it is now.

Near vertical walls like that are made up of larger more regular stones, usually squared off(naturally or manmade). You see this in Scottish Brochs

Whereas at Newgrange

We see small irregular globular stones. That ain't gonna hold back a stiff breeze in the vertical, never mind a squillion tons of earth and stone. Ask any gnarled faced bloke from the Blaskets who has been building dry stone walls for the last 30 years, based on a living tradition going back many thousands of years and I'll be the farm he'd take one look at Newgrange and say "ask me bollex" as Gaelige.

Cianmcliam

But if the cairn has settled and it has an angled profile then building a facade against it is a whole different enterprise, building a vertical free-standing structural wall wouldn't be a good comparison. I think you could easily build a free-standing quartz facade against the outer face of Gavrinis, Le Petit Mont, Barnenez etc. and it would be quite stable.

Look at Dowth, the mound has a more gently sloped profile and it has never collapsed like Newgrange did (unless you think of Newgrange as a multi-period mound rather than a collapsed cairn), if Newgrange was built like Dowth then it is very hard to explain the profile of the cairn slip.

Wibbs

Cianmcliam wrote: »

But if the cairn has settled and it has an angled profile then building a facade against it is a whole different enterprise, building a vertical free-standing structural wall wouldn't be a good comparison. I think you could easily build a free-standing quartz facade against the outer face of Gavrinis, Le Petit Mont, Barnenez etc. and it would be quite stable.

Couple of little problems with that. The other examples you give(though to be fair I'm not familiar with Barnenez) are of very different construction in that 1) they're more stone based, 2) those stones are very much like in the Broch example, more "brick shaped" which aids in building such a structure(3 they're more of a early stepped egyptian pyramid vibe in layout compared to the Boyne examples). Even in those cases try abutting a quartz layer of small irregular stones up against them. A heavy rain would likely have them come down.

Look at Dowth, the mound has a more gently sloped profile and it has never collapsed like Newgrange did (unless you think of Newgrange as a multi-period mound rather than a collapsed cairn), if Newgrange was built like Dowth then it is very hard to explain the profile of the cairn slip.

The other one Knowth has a load of these quartz cobbles laid out as a courtyard kinda vibe. One other explanation for the cairn slip might be erosion processes.

This came to me in an odd way. A rellie has a slope on his garden. A big one too and it runs at around 45 degrees. Back in the 70's they decided to build a rockery. Fierce popular as they were at the time and it meant he'd get use from this area. He brought in many tons of rocks around the size of a big shoebox per stone. Anyway in the end the aspect was wrong the fancy plants died and it was left to turn to seed. The odd kid ran up a part of it that lent itself to being a path of sorts, an animal track(foxes and the local dogs kinda thing) ran up another bit of it. Fast forward to today. It's covered in small trees, the terracing and rockery is nowhere to be seen. However the majority of the rocks they brought into the site have ended up down at the bottom, concentrated mostly around the natural "path". If you didn't know what they had originally planned you'd swear blind that they had built a huge drystone wall at the base of it. It's quite amazing how far such sharp edged large stones originally dug into the ground for the rockery have traveled and how the barely discernible dip where the path lays has attracted them like a magnet. This was over a period of three decades, over three millennia such processes are gonna be even more at play.

Now look at old pre reconstruction photos of Newgrange.

Observe the path where it runs to the right of the entrance.
Look at this one


There's a big chunk outa the top, the original surface whatever it was has long been washed, trampled, rolled, even taken away for reuse.

Basically one whole side of Newgrange concentrated around the entrance might have been covered over it's surface at a gentler angle with the white cobbles. Ditto for Knowth and Dowth*. Like a crescent moon if viewed from above or afar across the valley. That idea would fit better than the vertical slab side IMH (such as it is) and would suggest more of a continuity of design than big wall at Newgrange, plaza at Knowth and Dowth...well there are quartz cobbles but we'll leave it at that kinda thing.



*Knowth had housing on top of it at a much later date so any cobbles over the slope would have gone walkabout or down to the bottom then. Dowth also had quartz concentrated at the base near the entrance.

Cianmcliam

I see what you're saying, though the entrance was completely covered until they dug it out centuries ago when they were taking stone for the road.

Have a look at this photo of the dry stone revetment built in the 19th century and which stood over the kerb until the 1960's

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7li9frtqbdhhcg1/IMG_0136.JPG

See also the cairn material behind it, it was mostly stone with layers of turf to stabilise it and channel the force downward rather than outward. Barnenez didn't have the turf layers but it was made with similarly small stones which lock into place once they settle. Once the cairn settles a wall could easily stand against it just like the 19th century revetment which looks anything but brick-like. There are also photos of the cuttings into Knowth where all the layers are exposed for several meters in a vertical profile but it didn't collapse in. The force was also channeled down rather than out.

The profile of the slip shows that it came down in one or two major collapses, not piecemeal by erosion as the quartz was piled high against the kerb and decreased in quantity outwards, there were no clay layers in the quartz which would indicate erosion caused a gently sloping face to slip out over a long period. There was no quartz under the collapsed kerbstones either.

Although the Brittany monuments were sometimes of a stepped arrangement, this was due to expansion outwards, the original walls were built against and the passages lengthened. Have a look at La Hougue Bie as well, not stepped at all but has a very high near vertical dry stone facing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hougue_Bie

Wibbs

Cianmcliam wrote: »

Have a look at this photo of the dry stone revetment built in the 19th century and which stood over the kerb until the 1960's

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7li9frtqbdhhcg1/IMG_0136.JPG

See also the cairn material behind it, it was mostly stone with layers of turf to stabilise it and channel the force downward rather than outward. Barnenez didn't have the turf layers but it was made with similarly small stones which lock into place once they settle. Once the cairn settles a wall could easily stand against it just like the 19th century revetment which looks anything but brick-like.

I grant you,(great pic BTW ) but the revetment going by the size of the kerbstones for scale is what 6 feet/2 metres at most? And it's also showing signs of collapse pretty soon after it was made. The facade today is far larger and far deeper and I'll still bet the farm it would not stay near as vertical as it has been reconstructed.

There are also photos of the cuttings into Knowth where all the layers are exposed for several meters in a vertical profile but it didn't collapse in.

That's after many thosands of years of it settling, bedding down. Try leaving them exposed for a couple of wet winters. Look at the large stones in the corridor of Newgrange. Quite the number appear to have leaned inwards(and some have concrete buttresses), that's a sideways force acting against much more stable objects compared to a drystone wall type affair

The force was also channeled down rather than out.

Then why did so many of the kerbstones fall?

There was no quartz under the collapsed kerbstones either.

Oh really? Hmmm. Does this mean the kerbstones collapsed before the suggested quartz wall that was resting on them? OK how would that work? That's not that far off suggesting a roof staying in place when the walls fall down. Bear with me CC and pardon my ignorance but I'm not seeing how otherwise you'd end up with this arrangement. Much more likely in such a structure as represented today that at least some of the quartz would shift before rocks weighing many tonnes would. So you would expect to find at least some quartz under some of the kerbstones. The only way I could see such a result would be a sudden catastrophic event that took the whole lot down in one go. Earthquake, really heavy rain leading to a totally sodden structure? Even so you'd need a helluva strong force acting sideways(rather than down) to roll such a wall forward in it's entirety and take a few dirty great stones with them. I'd still expect some of the quartz to be found under the kerbstones. That's really odd.

TBH I'm now beginning to see the idea of the quartz courtyard in the Knowth reconstruction. Cos if me as a rank gobshíte was faced with kerbstones knocked over, quartz beyond them and no quartz to be found under them I'd be thinking quartz courtyard. That they didn't fall as such, that's where they were originally. EDIT the only problem with that might be that the courtyard couldn't have run right up to the kerb as otherwise again you'd have quartz under the collapsed ones. Real headscratcher.

Curse you you smartarse ancestors. Feck it I'm jumping in my tardis to bring them back a keg of beer and to see what they really looked like. "Actually it's an air raid shelter". "Eh wut". "Yea long story Ted. These Alien dudes have been trying to convince us to build pyramids and they'd help us with antimatter lifters, I think they said. WTF? Right? But we weren't buying, suggested they go elsewhere. This didn't go down well, so every midwinter since they started hurling big rocks at us for no good reason, so now when they do we all run in there, have a beer and relax. BTW anything come of this pyramid idea?".

Have a look at La Hougue Bie as well, not stepped at all but has a very high near vertical dry stone facing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hougue_Bie

Wow never heard of that place! Very cool.

Cianmcliam

There's two important things really to note about the photo of the revetment, firstly the fact that it is a thin dry stone structure that held back the newly dug outer facing of the cairn which is near vertical. Yes it had settled since construction but the digging of the deep ditch would have undermined the shape it had settled into.

The second point, that I've yet to see anyone really give any attention to, is that behind it the cairn is very high above the kerb, too high to allow a gentle slope above the kerb, and is made of stone, not accumulated clay. This means either the cairn was drum shaped like O'Kelly said, or it was an extremely tall cone shape. An extremely tall cone shape is implausible because it would quickly crush the corbel chamber beneath it.

Funnily enough most of the fallen kerbstones were at the north (back) side of the cairn, where there was no retaining wall and the cairn was built over an existing turf mound, not the carefully layered construction around the entrance. Some kerbstones did fall at the front, but as you noted above, if there was a quartz court they should have fallen onto it.

The turve layer directly behind the kerb was quite thick in places, it may also be that the quartz wall was built on top of that rather than sitting on the kerb, the kerbstones may have stood out in front of the wall. This makes sense given the carvings on top of some of the stones. When the pressure of the cairn compressed the turve layers they squeezed out a bit under the wall, pushing the on the kerbstones without destabilising the quartz wall too much.

The quartz was 1m thick at the kerb face, which would also have made the shadow casting phenomenon of the Bronze Age great circle impossible.

I think Muiris O'Sullivan is making a case for the quartz at Knockroe also having been on rather than in front of the cairn, while at Knowth I think the quartz was found lying over the features that had been made outside the entrances, the circular dish shaped structure and the semi-circular 'shrine' like features against the kerb. We'll have to wait another year or so for both of these final reports to be published to find out for sure though! There are accounts of quartz piled behind the kerbstones at Loughcrew as well.

bogwalrus

Wibbs wrote: »

We see small irregular globular stones. That ain't gonna hold back a stiff breeze in the vertical, never mind a squillion tons of earth and stone. Ask any gnarled faced bloke from the Blaskets who has been building dry stone walls for the last 30 years, based on a living tradition going back many thousands of years and I'll be the farm he'd take one look at Newgrange and say "ask me bollex" as Gaelige.

The wall reminds me of decorations you would see on old Irish shields. The wall could of been decorated similar to show it was a defensive wall.

Wibbs

*aside* I'm getting off on the fact I learned a new word "revetment" and used it in this debate all because of Cianmcliam

Cianmcliam

Haha! I think we could thank O'Kelly for knowing all about revetments! People sometimes forget he originally qualified in engineering and architecture only later getting drawn in to study archaeology after being employed as a surveyor on a dig. When critics say 'it's just one archaeologists dodgy interpretation', they forget he was probably the only Irish archaeologist at the time with a really solid background in engineering and architecture, he knew what was what and was also one of the pioneers of experimental archaeology in Ireland, putting theories to the test before drawing conclusions.

roughneck

veri interesting i always thought newgrange never looked like that at the start ,now heres a question ,how much reconstructions been done in the victorian and modern age to these monuments and now that we have learned about these stuctsures and people ,should we not right what we did wrong then ,for future generations,they all look a bit of a hollywood set at the moment .

Wibbs

I still don't buy the reconstruction I have to say. Not the shape and scale of it. I can see the reasoning but...

On the original topic of the Knowth "sundial" another thought occurred to me when looking at it. Could it be a drawn plan of another site? A site that was a astronomical "dial". Maybe one that predated Knowth or stood on the same site? It was a holy site, so they slapped knowth on top and stuck a map of the original on the side?

Here follows the wonkiest illustration ever...


Why the thought occurred was actually the wonky drawing. Clearly they could do circles really well, so why do the blocks at the end of the "rays" vary so much. Then I thought maybe they vary because that's what they were representing and what might vary? Standing stones. The images outside them may be wooden? A henge outside the stone henge? The blooby round area at the top is anyones guess. Maybe a viewing area for the priests? The "rays" that run between the "gnomon" and the "stones" could simply be rays, or shadows of the sun as they hit each stone through the year(or day?).

Basically, rather than a sundial itself, could it be the representation of a life sized one? Would this "plan" map onto any sites local to the area, or older sites that appear to have become unused?

slowburner

Wibbs wrote: »

Could it be a drawn plan of another site?

Why the thought occurred was actually the wonky drawing. Clearly they could do circles really well, so why do the blocks at the end of the "rays" vary so much. Then I thought maybe they vary because that's what they were representing and what might vary? Standing stones. The images outside them may be wooden? A henge outside the stone henge? The blooby round area at the top is anyones guess. Maybe a viewing area for the priests? The "rays" that run between the "gnomon" and the "stones" could simply be rays, or shadows of the sun as they hit each stone through the year(or day?).

Basically, rather than a sundial itself, could it be the representation of a life sized one? Would this "plan" map onto any sites local to the area, or older sites that appear to have become unused?

I've always liked this possibility.
Spirals aside, many pieces of rock art share remarkable similarities with the overall appearance of many antiquities - barrows, tumuli etc.. The only difficulty I see with this aspect of the theory is that the morphology of many of these earthworks is later than the rock art - so far as we know.

This image of rock art at Agharibble, Dingle, Co. Kerry is from the magnificent photographer and all round good guy, Ken Williams

Wibbs

So this has been already considered SB? Dammit. And there's me ignorantly smug I was being novel in my thinking.

slowburner

Wibbs wrote: »

So this has been already considered SB? Dammit. And there's me ignorantly smug I was being novel in my thinking.

I'm not aware of any published work on rock art as a form of mapping and I haven't heard it discussed either.
So why not refer enquiring minds to the Wibbsian Rock Art theory, whenever they ask what what all those cup and rings are?

I don't know of any references offhand but Elizabeth Shee Twohig is the authority - insofar as there can be one.
See The Megalithic Art of Western Europe. 1981. Clarendon Press. (A snip at £410 :eek:)

This review by Muiris O'Sullivan states:
'However, at the end of the book, the old controversial issues remain unsolved and there is no new insight into central issues such as the origins, functions and interpretation of the ornament.'
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25508807

Such is the wonder of these grey areas in archaeology - nobody really knows.

Cianmcliam

Nice pic, I think I've seen it before :pac:

Here's some reading if you fancy putting the chronology of Tara in reverse and don't mind imagining an undiscovered northern style double court tomb on the hill http://www.knowth.com/tara-orthostat.htm

Richard Bradley did a nice attempt to beat what we know about rock art together into some kind of shape in 'Signing the Land' from the late 90's. It looks at placement in the landscape, route ways, the distribution of complex vs simple motifs etc. Well worth a read.

Some very interesting perspectives in the much more recent 'Visualising the Neolithic'
http://www.amazon.com/Visualising-Neolithic-Studies-Seminar-Papers/dp/1842174770
Papers by Guillame Robin and Robert Hensey deal with the possibility of Irish megalithic art being figurative and it's placement having been important for interpretation. Guillame has previously done an extremely thorough cataloging and analysis of what motifs where placed where in Irish passage tombs and even suggests where some of the re-used stones in the Boyne Valley may have been placed in the original monuments!
There's also a photo of a cow and some rock art on the cover, taken by that same Williams fella.

Wibbs

Cianmcliam wrote: »

Here's some reading if you fancy putting the chronology of Tara in reverse and don't mind imagining an undiscovered northern style double court tomb on the hill http://www.knowth.com/tara-orthostat.htm

One of the PDF's is reckoning similar to what I was thinking. Feck. Yep no original thought here.

Papers by Guillame Robin and Robert Hensey deal with the possibility of Irish megalithic art being figurative and it's placement having been important for interpretation.

TBH I always had trouble with the seemingly sharp delineation between figurative and abstract explanations for ancient art(not just in this time period). Especially the "purely abstract" approach. One of the above linked PDFs notes what I've reckoned(feck again ), namely that purely abstract art is actually rare in art history, it's nearly always representational, even if how they represented things is hard to fathom with modern eyes. And when it is "abstract" it's usually as ornament to a larger representational viewpoint.

Take the book of Kells. Even though they had the classical world stretching behind them and were in deep contact with it, their artistic viewpoint was largely pre classical. Yet, they were clearly trying to be representational with what they were creating. Their figures of the saints etc might be thought of as abstractions, but not to them, it's just how their cultural eye saw things. Our eyes see perspective and realistic figurative art only because we've learned it. People forget we lost the "eye" of classical perspective until the start of the Renaissance and if you were born in the 12th century you'd see a painting using perspective as magic. It would blow your mind.

Some symbols like the zig zags and spirals may be down to the "Baked off their tits"(tm) theory. Namely the use of hallucinogens as some part of the culture. Usually this is seen as a suggestion of shamanism, which I wouldn't agree with. It can be, but it's not exclusive to that faith. Hell there is a Christian sect in south america that uses ayahuasca. Zig zags and spirals crop up all over the world and from very early on in art history and that would suggest something common to human brains, rather than culture and drugs/sleep deprivation/fasting/meditation etc causes the human brain to see these symbols as a near given. Other aspects of such drugs/practices include the very strong idea of death and rebirth, which in a seasonal landscape is gonna be powerful juju. Many of those drugs involve strong dissociation and "death" of the person followed by a trip as a "soul" through this world or the next(which is usually seen as underground) and then a "rebirth" into reality*. So maybe there is some of that stuff going on in this megalithic culture that is informing the symbolism and maybe even informing some aspects of the building and usage of sites themselves.

Still even with all that I would suspect that at least some of the art, the art that isn't decorative/consistent, the art that stands out as different like the "sundial" we see today is of a representational nature. You see this is in the oldest cavepaintngs of the paleolithic. You get the "abstract" stuff, then you have the handprints, then you have monumentally representational art of animals(though interestingly humans are nearly always very basic. In painted art anyway, even though some of the artists were scarily talented). The problem today comes with trying to see through the cultural eyes of a very different and long dead viewpoint.





*Indeed when christian missionaries first contacted some shamanistic cultures they saw Jesus as a very powerful shaman because of the resurrection story, so this stuff can run deep.

tac foley

bogwalrus wrote: »

The wall reminds me of decorations you would see on old Irish shields. The wall could of been decorated similar to show it was a defensive wall.

The rebuilding of the New Grange outer wall in that 'style', some say, is a total frawk.

tac

cfuserkildare

Wibbs wrote: »

I still don't buy the reconstruction I have to say. Not the shape and scale of it. I can see the reasoning but...

On the original topic of the Knowth "sundial" another thought occurred to me when looking at it. Could it be a drawn plan of another site? A site that was a astronomical "dial". Maybe one that predated Knowth or stood on the same site? It was a holy site, so they slapped knowth on top and stuck a map of the original on the side?

Here follows the wonkiest illustration ever...


Why the thought occurred was actually the wonky drawing. Clearly they could do circles really well, so why do the blocks at the end of the "rays" vary so much. Then I thought maybe they vary because that's what they were representing and what might vary? Standing stones. The images outside them may be wooden? A henge outside the stone henge? The blooby round area at the top is anyones guess. Maybe a viewing area for the priests? The "rays" that run between the "gnomon" and the "stones" could simply be rays, or shadows of the sun as they hit each stone through the year(or day?).

Basically, rather than a sundial itself, could it be the representation of a life sized one? Would this "plan" map onto any sites local to the area, or older sites that appear to have become unused?

Excusing my ignorance for a moment, but could the variations be a way to account for Seasonal differences, or even a basic understanding of " Precession "

bogwalrus

In relation to what is depicted on the stone if found this image from Knowth.com website where maybe the knowth stone itself is one of the stone images on the stone. Just look at the pattern of all the other decorate stones. A nice circle.

Cianmcliam

Not sure I get what you mean, however the plan above is a sampling, practically all the stones on the southern side are decorated and most on the northern as well.

bogwalrus

Sorry I could have explained myself better. I mean the Knowth stone could be a map for all the other kerbstones. What Wibbs calls standing stones I call the Kerbstones. Because there is no standing stone structure in the area maybe the scale is much smaller.